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Andrea Pitzer

@andreapitzer.bsky.social

48K followers 1.1K following 4.2K posts

Books! One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, & a Nabokov bio. Now working on Snowblind: Death on the Polar Ice. Former karateka & record store clerk. Newsletter & podcast: andreapitzer.com.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · Nov 10

I currently have a newsletter in which I write regularly about how societies devolve into authoritarianism & what that means right now in the US & around the world. It also features essays about my unsettled childhood in West Virginia. Soon, it will also include art, surprises, & links to resources.

Degenerate Art

Andrea Pitzer on politics and history, the Arctic, and Appalachian exile.

degenerateart.beehiiv.com

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 2m

The Friday roundup is here! Links to the podcast episode, as always. And I wrote about my mother's dementia, her imaginary relationship with Donald Trump, their time in television, and whatever it is that's wrong with him.

October 10 Friday roundup

Links to the podcast! And what my mother and Donald Trump have in common.

degenerateart.beehiiv.com

Reposted by Andrea Pitzer

"spooky sukkot" daniel s. @self.agency · 5h

Rose Lerner @roselerner.bsky.social · 13h

This made me so happy

Screenshot of Claire's last skeet with one from the Frog and Toad bot underneath of Frog saying "don't be silly"

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 4h

A Dog for all the people.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 4h

It’s been a long week, everybody. Area Dog says you can knock off early.

The head and upper body, plus one paw, of a black and white Labby-looking dog wearing a red collar and snoozing on a dog bed.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 4h

Someone ask Peter Thiel if Greta Thunberg is in the room with him right now.

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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 9h

MIT's response to the Trump admin's proposed "compact" is excellent and should be a model for other universities. orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 6h

I'm glad she was comfortable at the end, and so sorry for your loss.💔

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LOLGOP ❌👑❌ @thefarce.org · 7h

“Apathy is a greater danger to the country than actual oppression in this moment.”

Andrea Pitzer gathered the most important bits so far from the debut year of her newsletter and NEXT COMES WHAT.

The State of The Degenerate Union

YouTube video by Degenerate Art by Andrea Pitzer

youtu.be

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 7h

well, at least you've found your people on this site

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 7h

Which is funny, because this is my gym shirt today.

Part of a t-shirt with a seat belt over the top left corner of the image. The shirt is black and has BIG in yellow letters surrounded by the white outline of a star.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 7h

Jim Dickinson fan over at the NYT showing their true colors today. (And no I don't have a subscription anymore, so you don't need to yell at me.)

A NYT Connections word grid, with the top row including "Third Sister Lovers" and the second row including "Big Star."

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 22h

Been waiting decades for the Pumpkin Gates of Hell to open up! And what luck—it’s right down the street…

An inflatable Halloween yard decoration of an enormous orange pumpkin mouth with red eyes and glowing green vine tendrils wrapped around it, as well as a flashing giant spider at each side of the base (one green and one purple).

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 23h

Still amazed that the Vatican has been more responsive to the threat Trump represents than the vast majority of American institutions.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

Yes it is him! And I hadn't watched--just listened--and totally missed it. Given that he died long ago, I realized the video was just reposted and not recently recorded at all. Thanks for recognizing him.

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

(And if I'd watched the video instead of just listening to it, I would have noticed T-Bone Wolk playing with them and realized that this was reposted by Hall recently but recorded years ago. So, perhaps "recent" in terms of the life of the song, but not at all recent as I meant it.)

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

A lovely (and recent) performance.

Daryl Hall and Nick Lowe - Cruel To Be Kind

YouTube video by Daryl Hall

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Andrea Pitzer

Assistant HR Director of Antifa @sethdmichaels.bsky.social · 1d

this is really good

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 10d

I wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein, why swallowing live frogs is a bad idea, and how context and history can release you from bright-kid syndrome, the illusion that you yourself are going to have every answer or fix the world.

You don't have to swallow frogs

Klein and Coates show that if you don't know what your core beliefs are, you're going to get played.

degenerateart.beehiiv.com

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

As someone who freelances and writes books in isolation, social media has been a gift, connecting me with other writers and journalists, as well as academics and editors. It's led to commissions, collaborations, TV appearances, and lectures all over the country—and to several real-life friendships.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 2d

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

We can build that vast opposition and stop Trump. But it's growing more and more unlikely to happen until tens of millions of us directly engage in the process. If you have your own ideas on effective political organization, go for it! But any real change requires actually *doing something*.

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

Trump & Co will not stop until they are stopped. Given the opportunity to do worse things, there's no endpoint at which they will not do them. Acting in your communities now—protesting and building local networks—is critical to creating a massive, visible, nationwide opposition to counter them.

Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 1d

Nothing remotely resembling an insurrection is happening anywhere in the country. Any violence associated with protest has been isolated, mild, and, in nearly every case, instigated by federal law enforcement. If we let Trump get away with calling dissent an insurrection, our republic is over.

BREAKING: Trump Admin 'Seriously' Considering Using the Insurrection Act, Reports NBC

President Trump is "seriously" considering invoking the Insurrection Act in order to more easily deploy National Guard troops to major cities as part of crime crackdown, NBC reported on Wednesday

www.mediaite.com

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Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

At this moment in history, just imagine having a platform that reaches millions of people—with wide leeway to cover almost anything—and doing this with it.

Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 1d

Doug Wilson co-authored a (plagiarized) book that defended the institution of slavery *as it was practiced in the antebellum South*. This is how Douthat introduced the subject while providing him with the NYT's platform:

Douthat: So, just to take a related example, one of the controversies of many that you’ve been mixed up in has to do with slavery, and whether slavery is absolutely forbidden by the Bible, absolutely forbidden to Christians, or whether it is critiqued, but allowed for.

Wilson: Right.

Douthat: And you think it is critiqued, but allowed for.

Wilson: Right.

Douthat: On this, on a straightforward reading of the New Testament, I would agree with you. I would say, pretty clearly, there is a pretty clear path from the message of the Bible to the abolition of slavery. But there is no moment in the New Testament when Jesus insists on the manumission of slaves.

Wilson: Right.

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Reposted by Andrea Pitzer

Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 1d

I love people's creativity and the various ways they have found to support each other. I've seen several examples of people doing this in Chicago. If you know a local vendor, can you do the same for them? Sell their goods so they won't be vulnerable to ICE?

A Facebook post by Jaime Andrade promotes a tamales and champurrado sale for Ms. Maria on Thursday, October 9th, at Kedzie & Byron to support her family. The flyer features tamales, a mug, and contact/payment info.

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Reposted by Andrea Pitzer

Mike Watkins @watkinsimmigration.bsky.social · 1d

USCIS Q3 data dropped today and woof, it's not pretty. Total pending cases at a new record high of 11.5m, net backlog increased from 4.9m to 5.4m cases, and "frontlog" bizarrely increased to 60K cases.

A lot of red flags in this data.

www.uscis.gov/tools/report...